Once again, Gloucester has been praised during the annual Keep NSW Beautiful Blue Star Sustainability Awards, formerly known as the Tidy Town Awards.
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The awardees gathered at the MidCoast Council Gloucester building on Thursday, October 26 for a small congratulations ceremony hosted by council; the main awards night took place in Maitland on Saturday, October 21.
Earlier in the year, Gloucester Tidy Towns committee worked together with MidCoast Council’s coordinator Community Strengthening, Lyndie Hepple to nominate three community projects across three different categories.
“There is such an amazing volunteering community in this town,” Ms Hepple said.
The committee choose the projects and collected the information to give to Ms Hepple to collate into the application for nomination.
This year’s big winner was Gloucester Public School for its organically grown Garden Club in the Going Green Education category.
The school has raised garden beds the students help grow vegetables in which are used in the school canteen and sold to the families to help buy more gardening supplies.
“I didn’t think we’d stand a chance,” GPS principal, Leanne Wakefield said at the Gloucester presentation.
Gloucester’s Boomerang Bags received Highly Commended in the Waste Less Recycle More category for the handmade shopping bags made from recycle material for the community to use and return at various locations in town.
In the Cultural Heritage category the committee contacted the Gloucester District Historical Society to help research the history of the Gloucester Memorial Park Cenotaph Clock Tower. A nomination was put together about the original construction and the recent renovations facilitated by the Gloucester Returned Services League (RSL) sub branch which received a finalist award.
“The Gloucester RSL sub branch are very proud to be the custodians of the clock tower war memorial,” Gloucester RSL sub branch president, Alan Vale said.
Members of the committee spoke during the presentation in Gloucester, recognising how important the community projects are to Gloucester’s identity
“It would be great to see Tidy Towns grow larger into the new council area,” Tidy Towns committee member, John Rosenbaum said.
“Thank you to the committee, they are such a great team,” Tidy Towns committee chair, Norma Fisher said.
“It such a great honour to have the respect of the community.”